The Wedge of Gold eBook

CHAPTER XVII.

Ontheirtravels.

But at last the hour for leaving came, and Sedgwick
and Jordan took the train and proceeded without delay
to Marseilles, where one of the steamers of the French
Imperial Messenger Line was about to sail for Port
Said. They at once secured transportation, went
on board, and a few hours later the ship proceeded
to sea. The weather was fair on the Mediterranean,
and putting aside any personal sorrows, Jordan exerted
himself to be cheerful for Sedgwick’s sake.

“This are ther water on which men fust learned
ter be sailors, arn’t it, Jim?” he asked.
“I mean whar they fust got inter ther notion
of venturin’ out whar ther old shore-shaker
could git a good hold on ’em?”

“Yes,” replied Sedgwick. “This
and the Red Sea. The Egyptians, the Carthagenians,
the Phoenicians, the Syrians, the Greeks, the Romans,
and a dozen other nations; later, the Venetians and
Spaniards, and no one knows how many other nations,
all learned how to build, navigate, and fight ships
on these waters. Think of it, Jordan, there were
sea fights here almost seven hundred years before
the Christ came. On this sea floated the fighting
Biremes, Triremes, and Quinquiremes of the Greeks,
Carthagenians, and Romans; and here the Egyptians and
Phoenicians trained their ships three thousand years
before the crucifixion.

“Could this sea give up its dead—­its
dead men and its dead ships; could they all come back
as they looked the moment before they sank, they would
make a panorama of the ages, and would show the progress
of the world for five thousand years. Every mile
square of this sea must be paved with things which
were once glorious in life and power. Maybe below
where we are sailing here, helmeted Roman soldiers,
being transported to some point of contemplated conquest,
went down. Here pirate craft have roamed; here
lumbering wheat ships have ploughed their way; here
the watches have been set by the crews of a hundred
nations; here sailors have been cursed in a thousand
tongues. Along these shores ship-building had
its birth; from these shores the ships sailed out
over these waters, engaging in foreign commerce, and
the camel-owner on the land learned to hate the thing
which on the water could carry the burden of many camels.
One could sit all day and conjure up the ghosts that
these blue waters are peopled with.”

“Go ahead, Jim,” said Jordan. “Thet
sounds as it useter when yo’ read to us in ther
old house thar in Texas. What war thet book that
told all ’bout Lissis and Ajax, the hoss-tamer
Diamed, and the boss fighters, Killes and Hector,
and ther pretty gal Helen, that raised all the hel-lo,
and Dromine, the squar woman thet war Hector’s
wife, and hed the kid thet war afeerd of the old man’s
headgear?”

“That was the Iliad, Jordan,” said Sedgwick,
“the first book that we read. The story
was the siege of Troy. That was a city over on
the east shore of this very sea, and the Greeks went
over there in their boats and besieged it for nine
years before they captured it.”